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TwitThisEmotionally Drained
Deborah and Robert decided it was up to them to let the public know about their daughter's case. They bought billboard advertising and pasted Kristen's picture on signs throughout the Bay Area. They notified local television stations and stood on San Francisco street corners passing out fliers, printed for free by a local Kinko's. "This responsible and family-oriented girl," the fliers read, "is considered at risk by her family and law enforcement."Their efforts began to pay off.
Bay Area TV news stations broadcast details about the case. The publicity did produce leads -- many of them, unfortunately, dead ends. An anonymous caller told police that Kristen was going to show up at a local diner at a specified time, and the cops staked out the place for six excruciating hours before concluding the call was a prank.
"Psychics started calling," says Mahanay. "We got a tip that she might be on her way to Oregon. Later, someone was certain he'd seen her in Nicaragua."
Finally, the Modafferis decided it was time to head home. They were paralyzed by the prospect of explaining to their girls how Kristen could have simply vanished.
"I couldn't talk to them, I was so emotionally drained," Deborah remembers. "I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want to say, 'We're not getting anywhere.' "
The most tantalizing lead came on July 10, two days after the Modafferis' departure. An unidentified male phoned KGO-TV in San Francisco, claiming that Kristen was killed fighting off the advances of two lesbians, her body dumped from a wooden bridge near Point Reyes, just north of San Francisco. Mahanay and Bradley traced the call to Jon Onuma, 38, a short Asian man with waist-length black hair who lived on O'Farrell Street, seven blocks from Spinelli's.
Onuma eventually admitted making the call, but said it was a prank to get even with two of his girlfriend's former co-workers, who he believed had plotted to have her fired. He claimed never to have met Kristen, but Mahanay and Bradley weren't buying his tale. "He gave us too many details," says Mahanay. "When people do that, we know they're not giving us a tip. They're telling us a story." The investigators did a background check, and eventually interviewed a handful of Bay Area women who had responded to classified ads placed by Onuma. They claimed he had tried to steal money from them or coerce them into sex, but fearful he'd seek revenge, they never pressed charges.
Mahanay and Bradley obtained search warrants and combed Onuma's apartment, where they discovered sizeable traces of blood. Subsequent testing showed that it was animal blood, and police maintain it came from cats belonging to a former girlfriend. Their theory is that Onuma killed the cats following a dispute. Police also focused their attention on another former girlfriend who claimed Onuma had gone into a frenzy during an argument and threatened to kill her, saying, "Now you know what happened to Kristen Modafferi."
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